Episcopal Church split gave life to three new congregations in the Myrtle Beach area

Those who left their home churches in Horry County when the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina broke apart in 2012 have formed new congregations that are working to build the traditions that will one day make them feel like home, too.

“I had the assumption that the Episcopal Church would always be there for me,” said Beth Ault, one of the former members of Trinity Episcopal Church who now is among the small congregation of the newly recognized Church of the Messiah in Myrtle Beach.

Trinity Episcopal has become simply Trinity Church where the majority of the congregation – like that at St. Paul’s Church in Conway – voted to split from the traditional Episcopal Church because they felt it had grown too liberal in changes it was making to liturgy that dates back to the 15th century.

The Episcopal Church’s ordination of a gay bishop in New Hampshire further fanned the discontent.

Likewise, some of those formerly with St. Stephens Episcopal Church in North Myrtle Beach needed a new start when the majority of members there voted to stay with the traditional church.

They have formed Grace Parish, also in North Myrtle Beach, where Vicar Linda Manuel said one of the big challenges has been to get the word out that they exist.

“It’s slow,” Manuel said of the church-building process, “and I’d like to see it grow faster.”

The breakaway churches are still Episcopal organizations in that they have bishops, but the word has become a descriptive adjective of the church rather than an upper-cased part of its formal name.

The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina has become The Episcopal Church in South Carolina, and the Diocese of South Carolina is the umbrella organization for the breakaway churches.

Those two are fighting over which owns the buildings, property and accoutrement of the breakaway churches.

The presiding judge in the lawsuit has made it clear that she will decide the case based on South Carolina law, effectively dismissing the fact that the fight is between religious organizations, and has ordered each side to submit by Wednesday the decision it would like her to render. She will use those opinions in her deliberation of a resolution.

Meanwhile, newly formed congregations are working to pick up the scattered pieces of their religious beliefs.

Among other things, they have had to acquire things such as hymnals, prayer books, candles, robes, staffs and banners from other churches or to make them from scratch.

The Church of the Messiah had its roots in meetings at the homes of former Trinity members and now holds Sunday services in space loaned to it by Myrtle Beach’s First United Methodist Church. Grace Parish has also gone through a transition and members now are worshiping in a North Myrtle Beach recreation building.

St. Anne’s, a congregation formed by former St. Paul’s members, is meeting at the chapel on the campus of Coastal Carolina University.

The new churches are known as mission churches by the hierarchy of the Diocese and the Episcopal Church in S.C.

While the Diocese has provided a full-time vicar for the Grace Parish congregants, the Episcopal Church has appointed a part-time priest in charge for Messiah church.

“We tend to call them parishes when they’re a little bit larger and can call their own rector,” said Holly Behre, spokeswoman for The Episcopal Church in South Carolina.

The Episcopal Church requires that new congregations be at least a year old before it will officially recognize them as mission churches. Grace got its official designation as a mission parish from the Diocese after meeting for six months, Manuel said.

Besides the institutional challenges of forming a new congregation, the break-up has had personal fallout as well.

Messiah church member Colin Burch chose to stay with the traditional church while his wife and three daughters continue to worship at Trinity Church.

The bishop of The Episcopal Church in S.C. conducted the service where one of his daughters joined the traditional church.

He said his children see the situation much like they might a divorce.

“They just don’t know which (parent) to go with,” he said.

Ault has found her involvement with the church grew after the break-up.

“I didn’t pay attention to (the church and all its activities) until it started to fall apart,” she said.

She had confined her time at Trinity to being a member of the choir. She would go to Sunday service, sing and go home.

Now, she sees that her contributions are critical to the success at Messiah church and gives more financially and participates in more activities, including the choir.

“I bring food,” she joked.

Manuel said she has tried to focus members at Grace Parish on the good they can do by volunteering to help the less fortunate.

“You always want to be looking out the window when you worship,” she said, “and realize how many people out there are hurting.”

Neither the Diocese nor the Church in S.C. has an exact count of how many members it has now, two years after the break-up. Forty-two congregations, like Trinity and St. Paul’s, decided to break away from the traditional church, leaving it with just 30 congregations.

Behre estimated that the Church in S.C. has about 6,000 members now, down from 29,000 before the split. Messiah and St. Anne’s are two of eight mission churches the Church in S.C. has recognized in the last year.

Diocese spokesman Jim Lewis said that it’s hard to compare the current Diocese with the pre-split Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina.

While Grace has joined as a parish mission, at least one other church that was not formerly associated with the traditional church has joined the Diocese, he said.

“The last year has been a sorting out period,” Lewis said.

The Rev. Iain Boyd, chief pastor at Trinity, said his church lost about 30 members immediately after the breakaway and since then some new members have joined while others have gone elsewhere.

“I’m encouraged to see there hasn’t been much acrimony,” he said.

In fact, there is at least one thread of continuity that remains intact after the break-up.

A Tuesday night Bible study group by members of Trinity that was organized years ago still attracts those from Trinity and those, such as Burch, who chose to remain with the traditional church.

“I think that’s something really special that’s happening here in Myrtle Beach,” Boyd said.

This story was originally published December 7, 2014 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Episcopal Church split gave life to three new congregations in the Myrtle Beach area."